


Things That Didn't Happen to Elizabeth Orme

by KatlinelB5



Category: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crossover, Gen, Portals, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatlinelB5/pseuds/KatlinelB5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Events in the Saga of the Exiles where things could have gone a different way for Elizabeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything from Julian May’s worlds; Julian May does. No copyright infringement is intended; I am only borrowing these characters.

“Try again, Elizabeth.”

At the Denali Institute of Metapyschology she tried yet again to telepathically project her message to Kwong’s mind in the testing booth. It will work… it must work. 

Awakening after her accident in a rejuvenated younger body, learning that her husband had died in said accident and that she had no access to her mind powers, had been shock upon shock for the middle-aged teacher. 

The chance to access her powers now was something Elizabeth focussed on in desperation. What else did she have?

There was the sensation of something rusty stretching in her mind and her breath caught.

An unprofessional whoop came from the booth and then its door opened.

“Message received!” Kwong said, his smile echoing Elizabeth’s own delighted one. “Welcome back.”

She will be able to reclaim her career, she will stay here on Denali, the icy planet that is her home. If the testing hadn’t worked, she would have gone to Exile - the time portal on Earth that led to Pliocene Europe - like many other lost ones. 

Elizabeth dismissed Exile from her mind in relief.


	2. Chapter 2

Elizabeth studied her face in the mirror for the last time. She was not a vain woman, but there was still that moment of surprise when she saw her younger, unlined face reflected back at her… earlier than planned.

She and her husband Lawrence had wanted to live a long life together until old age couldn’t be ignored… and then their immersion in regen tanks until they popped out young again and full of energy.

But their disastrous accident had changed their plans, and now she was young again but with no access to her mind powers. A prisoner in her own skull with the Unity and her career teaching young telepaths lost to her.

His younger face joined hers in the mirror.

“No, I can’t see any spots either,” Lawrence said dryly, but with a faint smile. He quickly reached for her hand, gripping it tightly for a moment and she let him.

He couldn’t access his powers anymore either, to the despair of the other redactors who had tried to help them (really, they were both a scandal!). She and Lawrence could only communicate now by talking or by touch - crude, almost primitive ways compared to their former telepathic communion. She could forgive him though for finding any excuse to hold her hand.

Elizabeth didn’t know how she would have coped if she had been left alive and Lawrence had died. The thought of him as a widower left alone in his own minds prison sounded equally dreadful.

“Come on, we don’t want to miss the flight,” Lawrence said cheerfully. 

Elizabeth had suggested in the end that they both leave Denali for Exile – she mourned what she had lost, but she saw that Lawrence had taken his own losses even harder. 

The pity they saw in other people’s eyes was corrosive as well.

“All right,” she said, putting a bright smile on her face. She ignored the shadows she saw again in Lawrence’s eyes. Really, everything would be fine.

Outside, the wind howled.


	3. 2

Elizabeth had accepted, if bitterly, the loss of access to her powers after the accident. Back on Denali, the strength of her farsensing and mind-healing redaction powers had granted her the title of Grand Master, though her power of psychokinesis - of moving objects with the mind - had been weak. On a good day she could make a salt cellar lurch across a table.

She had accepted that was all she could do with that particular talent… but in her dreams, Elizabeth was able to make boulders dance at her command, to move mountains.

But now… now she had arrived through the time portal to Exile, to find an alien race no one had ever seen before or knew about.

Ironically, the shock of coming through the portal had succeeded in restoring her powers to her, something her work colleagues had failed to do.

Now in the company of one of these kindly-seeming aliens, she could see in her mind her farsensing and redaction powers strong and waiting to be used again, if a bit rusty. To her further amazement, her formerly weak psychokinesis was now equally strong as well, waiting to be used too.

How? 

She tried to find a rational explanation, but part of her was triumphant.

Now, perhaps, she can move mountains in this new land.


	4. Chapter 4

“There... what has been lost to you is now restored,” Creyn said to Elizabeth, smiling benevolently at her. “A great life is ahead of you.”

Still feeling disoriented after her trip through the time portal to Exile, Elizabeth was now shocked to feel her lost metafunctions return one by one. The strong farsensing and redaction, her weak psychokinesis too.

All thanks to this – exotic – in this strange castle and what he had just given her.

Grateful and disbelieving, Elizabeth reached up to touch the silver torc fastened securely around her neck.


	5. Chapter 5

“This is sanity?” Felice asked, blinking. “I feel wonderful – like I could take on the world!”

She laughed warmly with no trace of madness, but Elizabeth felt a sense of foreboding. She had set out to heal Felice and had urged the younger woman to choose healing. But what had Felice actually chosen?

Felice continued. “Everyone should feel this wonderful, but first those rebel devils will have to go. All of them!”

Felice bounced up and stood on the cot, looking vital and alive, her platinum hair shining around her face. Thoughts of annihilation were dominant and gleeful in her mind.

“Felice, wait…” Elizabeth began, but it was too late.

Felice had vanished.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything to do with Doctor Who. No copyright infringement is intended; I am only borrowing these characters.

“If only we had help - from the Milieu, from anyone powerful enough – to deal with Marc Remillard”, Elizabeth said to Creyn, feeling weary.

Frustration rose up in her mind again at the thought of that terrible man. How was he still alive? Blessed Diamond Mask and Saint Jack the Bodiless, Marc’s younger brother, had both laid down their lives nearly thirty years ago to stop him and his Metapsychic Rebellion. 

Marc was thought to have died along with his inner circle of rebels and had eventually become a warning to children of the dangers of awesome mind powers combined with hubris. 

Elizabeth sent a desperate prayer to Blessed Diamond Mask. _Help me!_

Suddenly there was a series of whirring noises and an alarmed Elizabeth and Creyn both turned to a corner of the room where something boxlike was starting to materialise. Her first horrified thought that it was Marc was replaced by bafflement when she saw it appeared to be a blue police telephone box, of all things.

Nevertheless, she readied a redactive deep-probe in defence.

A door in the blue box opened and a man with an impish yet vexed face strode out. He wore a grey tweed jacket over black trousers and a beret was perched rakishly on his dark hair.

“I said I wanted to visit France, not Pliocene-era France, old girl! For one thing there’s no Eiffel Tower and it’s too late to see any dinosaurs. But there is you – and a very tall you – and some civilisation here. Which is curious,” he said, pointing at Elizabeth and Creyn. “I think this could be a different universe too, Clara,” he said soberly as a dark-haired woman followed him out of the box.

“A different universe?” Clara scolded, before looking at Creyn with interest. 

“It’s not my fault!”

“What madness is this? We are nowhere near the time portal,” Creyn said in confusion, frowning at the two strangers.

The man brightened at that.

“Time portal? I love time portals, they’re so timey-wimey. So… if you came through one, you should still have some tachyon residue about you.”

With that, he brought out a silvery, stick-like gadget from a pocket and walking up to a bemused Elizabeth with a smile, he waved it in front of her. The gadget made a buzzing noise and then what sounded like a metallic hiccup.

The man peered at Elizabeth, his eyes narrowed though a smile was still on his face. 

“Well! There’s something mysterious about you. What are you?”

Without waiting for an answer he then turned inquiringly to Creyn with his odd gadget, but Elizabeth said sternly, “This is his time… I chose to travel back from my time to be here. And whoever you are, stranger, there is nothing mysterious about me.”

_Despite my restored youth I’m just a middle-aged, widowed teacher who is so much in the deep end I feel I am drowning in it,_ Elizabeth thought. _Surely you can’t be the help I was praying for? If you’re another person who insists I have some silly Destiny, I will surely start shouting and throwing things._

The stranger turned back to her and said quietly, “As well as travelling through time? I am the Doctor and I deal with all matters of time. If I say you’re mysterious, then you are.”

He then beamed. “I love a good mystery, don’t you?”

Clara looked at Elizabeth and smiled ruefully. “Congratulations… I’m the Impossible Girl and you’re now officially Mysterious.”


	7. Chapter 7

Elizabeth hadn’t intended to hug Marc when he finally brought her the adaption of Brendan’s program that she had been waiting and hoping for. The adaption that would help others heal the poor black-torc babies. 

She knows, intellectually, that Marc only helped her heal baby Brendan in the first place because Elizabeth, Dirigent of Pliocene Earth, had the ear of King Aiken Drum – it wasn’t done out of kindness. She had just argued with Brother Anatoly that Marc Remillard wasn’t capable of repenting or indeed, atoning for his crimes.

But somehow the combination of hearing the happy news and Marc’s famous sweet smile directed at her – almost as if he really meant it – had the effect of her giving a joyous shout, dropping the mending she had been doing and running towards the tall, black-clad figure.

There’s a flicker of surprise in Marc’s grey eyes and mind when her arms reach out to embrace him… and then there’s a bright, blue-white flash of light from him that briefly surrounds them both like a corona.

Elizabeth doesn’t notice Brother Anatoly looking pleased with himself.


End file.
